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| Description |
"Its chief virtues are a succinct, mostly lucid style, a wide intellectual scope, a flood of ideas and insights at every turn, sensitivity to the technology and culture of photography, and a willingness to attend to images . . . In the end, perhaps the best measure of a text is whether or not one would choose it from among all the offerings to use in class. I have chosen to use this book." - Photo Review, Spring 2000
"An excellent introductory history book." - Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism
In this wonderful and entertaining book, Hirsch has produced the most useful, readable, and practical successor to Newhall. Seizing the Light is written in a friendly, accessible way -- dense with information, but more hip and lively than other offerings, especially those aimed at college students." - exposure: The research journal of the Society for Photographic Education. Vol. 32.2 (Fall, 1999)
Hirsch's prose is very digestible. He writes in a clear, lively style with a minimum of jargon." - Views: the newsletter of the Visual Material Section of the Society of American Archivists
Science, culture, and art come together in this comprehensive history of photography. With superlative production values, rare and unusual prints, and a fresh perspective, Robert Hirsch has written the ideal companion to the first 200 years of photography. |
| Key Features |
Seizing the Light is the first new photo history to be published in English since the early `80s.
New images: The author, an image-maker, educator, and curator, has done exhaustive archival research to include rare and seldom seen prints.
High production quality: The photographs in Seizing the Light are reproduced on heavy paper, at large sizes, and with careful attention to subtle variation in tints and shading.
Incorporates professionals into the artistic narrative: From Weegee, the original paparazzo, to three generations of war correspondents covering the American Civil War, two World Wars, and Vietnam, Seizing the Light shows how front-page cameramen and women have influenced the development of the art of photography.
Traces the relationship between the art and the science of photography: Beginning with pinhole cameras and progressing to digitalization, Seizing the Light relates artistic developments to the technical advances that made them possible.
Addresses the social influence of photography: The book shows how, from the Dust Bowl to the Vietnam War, photographs have had a profound affect on Western society and culture.
Excellent coverage of photography since 1945: Virtually unexamined by previous survey texts, post-war photography and the influence of digital technologies are thoroughly covered.
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| Author Biography |
Robert Hirsch is an artist, author, curator, and educator. Hirsch is the author of Seizing the Light: A History of Photography; Exploring Color Photography: From the Darkroom to the Digital Studio published by McGraw-Hill and Photographic Possibilities: The Expressive Use of Ideas, Materials, and Processes published by Focal Press.
He is a former associate editor for Photovision magazine and is a contributing writer for Afterimage, Digital Photography (UK), exposure, Ilford Photo Newsletter, and The Photo Review.
He was the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Art (CEPA Gallery) in Buffalo, NY.
Hirsch is on the art faculty of SUNY Buffalo and teaches history of photography online through Eastern New Mexico University.
Recently his images have been shown at: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM; Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro, VT; Artspace, New Haven, CT; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; George Eastman House, Rochester, NY; Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, Brooklyn, NY; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD; and Stefan Stux Gallery, NY, NY.
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| Table of Contents |
Chapter 1: Advancing towards Photography: The Birth of Modernity
A Desire for Visual Representation
Perspective
Thinking of Photography
Camera Vision
The Demand for Picture-Making Systems
Proto-Photographers: Chemical Action of Light
Modernity: New Visual Realities
Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre
Optical Devices
Images through Light: A Struggle for Permanence
Joseph Nicephore Niepce
John Herschel
William Henry Fox Talbot
Anna Atkins
Other Distinct Originators
Hippolyte Bayard
Mungo Ponton
Hercules Florence
Chapter 2: The Daguerreotype: Image and Object
What is a Daguerreotype?
Samuel Morse
The Daguerreotype Comes to America
The Early Practitioners
Early Daguerreian Portrait Making
Post-Mortem Portraits
Technical Improvements
Expanding U.S. Portrait Studios
Albert Sands Southworth
Josiah Johnson Hawes
Matthew Brady
The Art of the Daguerreian Portrait
Daguerreian Portrait Galleries and Picture Factories
African-American Operators
Rural Practice
The Daguerreotype and the Landscape
The Daguerreotype and Science
John Whipple
Chapter 3: Calotype Rising: The Arrival of Photography
The Calotype
Early Calotype Activity
David Octavius Hill
Robert Adamson
William Newton
Thomas Keith
Calotypists Establish a Practice
Louis Desire Blanquart-Evrard
Thomas Sutton
Gustave le Gray
Charles Negre
Calotype and Architecture: Mission Heliographique
Jean Louis Henri le Secq
Edouard Denis Baldus
Charles Marville
The End of the Calotype and the Future of Photography
Chapter 4: Pictures on Glass: The Wet-Plate Process
The Albumen Process
Frederick Scott Archer
The New Transparent Look
The Ambrotype
Pictures on Tin
The Carte-de-Visite and the Photo Album
Andre Disderi
John Mayall
The Cabinet Photograph: The Picture Gets Bigger
The Studio Tradition
Nadar
Camille Silvy
Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon
Napoleon Sarony
Retouching and Enlargements
The Stereo Craze
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Chapter 5: Prevailing Events/Picturing Calamity
Current Events
Early War Coverage
Roger Fenton
James Robertson
Felice Beato
The American Civil War
Matthew Brady
Alexander Gardner
Timothy O?Sullivan
George Barnard
Andrew Russell
How Photographs Were Circulated
Chapter 6: A New Medium of Communication: Art or Industry?
Lady Elizabeth Eastlake
Discovering a Photographic Language
Lewis Carroll
Oscar Gustave Rejlander
Henry Peach Robinson
Julia Margaret Cameron
Americans and the Art of Nature Positivism
Hugh Welch Diamond
Thomas Barnardo
Chapter 7: Standardizing the Practice: A Transparent Truth
Mechanical Photography
The Traveling Camera
Maxime Du Camp
John B. Green
Auguste Salzmann
John Shaw Smith
Francis Frith
Robert MacPherson
Fratelli Alinari
Bisson Brothers
Picturing Industrialization
Phillip Delamotte
Robert Howlett
Joseph Cundall
Edouard Baldus
Camille Silvy
Samuel Bourne
Urban Life
John Thomson
Thomas Annan
The Other
The American West: The Narrative and the Sublime
Carleton E. Watkins
Timothy O?Sullivan
William Henry Jackson
Eadweard Muybridge
Chapter 8: New Ways of Visualizing Time and Space
The Inadequacy of Human Vision
Locomotion
Thomas Eakins
Etienne-Jules Marey
Ottomar Anschutz
Transforming Aesthetics: Technical Breakthroughs
The Hand Held Camera and the Snapshot
Time and Motion as an Extended Continuum
Moving Pictures
Color
Chapter 9: Suggesting the Subject: The Evolution of Pictorialism
Roots of Pictorialism
Pictorialism and Naturalism
Peter Henry Emerson
The Development of Pictorial Effect
George Davison
The Secession Movement and the Rise of Photography Clubs
The Aesthetic Club Movement
Working Pictorially: A Variety of Approaches
Robert Demachy
Heinrich Keuhn
Frederick Evans
Pierre Dubreuil
American Perspectives
Alfred Stieglitz
The Photo-Secession
The Decadent Movement and Tonalism
Frederick Holland Day
Alvin Langdon Coburn
Women Pictorialists
Gertrude Kasebier
Alice Boughton
The Pictorial Epoch/The Stieglitz Group
Edward Steichen
Adolf de Meyer
Frank Eugene
Clarence Hudson White
The Decline of Pictorialism
Chapter 10: Modernism: Industrial Beauty
Modernism
Cubism
High and Low Art
Futurism
Anton Giulio Bragaglia
Arturo Bragaglia
Time, Movement, and the Machine
Frank B. Gilbreth
Lillian M. Gilbreth
Towards a Modern Practice: Distilling Form
Alvin Coburn
Paul Strand
Dada
Exploring Space and Time: The Return of the Photogram
Man Ray
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Surrealism
Collage
Max Ernst
Raoul Hausmann
John Heartfield
Hannah Hoch
Suprematism
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Art, Technology, and a New Faith
Bauhaus
Morton Schamberg
Charles Sheeler
Paul Strand and Straight Photography: Purity of Use
Chapter 11: The New Culture of Light
Teaching Modernism: The American Impulse
Paul Outerbridge
Margaret Bourke-White
Stieglitz?s ?Equivalents?
Steichen Goes Commercial
Form as Essence
Edward Weston
Straight, Modernistic Photography
Group f/64
Ansel Adams
Imogen Cunningham
William Mortensen
Film und Foto & New Objectivity
Albert Renger-Patzsch
Karl Blossfeldt
Jean Eugene Auguste Atget
Experimentally Modern
New Vision
Florence Henri
Gyorgy Kepes
Pathways of Light: Time, Space, and Form
Barbara Morgan
Frantisek Drtikol
Francis Joseph Bruguiere
Surrealistic Themes
Hans Bellmer
Georges Hugnet
Man Ray
Raoul Ubac
Chapter 12: Social Documents
An American Urge: Social Uplift
Jacob Riis
Lewis Hine
Ethnological Approaches
Adam Vroman
Edward Curtis
Francis Benjamin Johnston
E.J. Bellocq
Tina Modotti
Emerging Ethnic Consciousness
Horace Poolaw
James Van Der Zee
Eudora Welty
The Physiognomic Approach
August Sander
The Great Depression: The Economics of Photography
Dorthea Lange
Walker Evans
Arthur Rothstein
Russell Lee
Ben Shahn
Gordon Parks
Marion Post Wolcott
The FAP Project: Changing New York
Bernice Abbott
Mass Observation
Mass Observation
The Film and Photo League
Sid Grossman
Aaron Siskind
Chapter 13: Nabbing Time: Anticipating the Moment
Realizing a Moment
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Erich Salomon
Andre Kertesz
Brassai
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Bill Brandt
Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Lisette Model
Helen Levitt
Wright Morris
Harold Edgerton
Chapter 14: Photography and the Halftone
Pictures and Printers Ink
The Photo Magazine
John Heartfield
The Separation of Art and Commerce: Advertising and Fashion
Lejaren a Hiller
Nickolas Muray
Cecil Beaton
Horst P. Horst
Martin Munkacsi
Alexey Brodovitch
Irving Penn
Richard Avedon
Philippe Halsman
Yousuf Karsh
Arnold Newman
Newspapers
Weegee
War Reportage
Robert Capa
William Eugene Smith
Cornell Capa
Don McCullin
Larry Burrows
Eddie Adams
The New Subjective Journalism
Mary Ellen Mark
Sebasti?o Salgado
Bytes and Halftones
Chapter 15: The Atomic Age
Ansel Adams
The Surrealistic Metaphor
Clarence John Laughlin
Frederick Sommer
Val Telberg
The Photograph as Spirit
Minor White
Photo Education as Self-Expression
Harry Callahan
Aaron Siskind
Fotoform
Family of Man
Photography and Alienation
Robert Frank
William Klein
Mario Giacomelli
Making a Big Jump
Henry Holmes Smith
Richard Hamilton
Wallace Berman
The Subjective Documentary
Robert Doisneau
Roy DeCarava
Eliot Porter
The Terror of Riches
Chapter 16: New Frontiers: Expanding Boundaries
Structuralism: Reading a Photograph
The Found Image: The Beginnings of Postmodernism
Robert Rauschenberg
The Rise of Pop Art
William Burroughs
Andy Warhol
Marshall McLuhan
Challenging the Code
Art Sinsabaugh
Syl Labrot
The Social Landscape
Garry Winogrand
Lee Friedlander
Diane Arbus
New Journalism
Bruce Davidson
Danny Lyon
Multiple Points of View
Duane Michals
Nathan Lyons
Ray Metzker
Jerry Uelsmann
Robert Heinecken
The Rapid Growth of Photographic Education
Chapter 17: Changing Realities
Alternative Visions
Robert Fichter
Sonia Landy Sheridan
Thomas Barrow
William Larson
Turning the Straight Photograph on Itself
Ken Josephson
Joseph Jachna
Barbara Crane
Personal Accounts: Documentary Fiction
Ralph Eugene Meatyard
Les Krims
Lucas Samaras
Ralph Gibson
Larry Clark
Michael Lesy
Eugene Richards
The Snapshot
Emmet Gowin
Judy Dater
Bill Owens
Post-Structuralism/New Topographics
Edward Ruscha
Lewis Baltz
Robert Adams
The Rephotographic Survey Project/Time Changes
Color Rising
William Eggleston
Joel Meyerowitz
Artists? Books
Reconfiguring Information
Ruth Thorne-Thomsen
Critical Writing
Chapter 18: Thinking about Photography
Conceptual Art: The Act of Choosing
Nam June Paik
John Baldessari
Performance Art
Bruce Nauman
Arnulf Rainer
Anselm Keifer
Gilbert and George
William Wegman
A Return to Typologies
Bernhard and Hilla Becher
Robert Cumming
Postmodernism
Bart Parker
Paul Berger
MANUAL
Deconstructing Myths
Richard Prince
Sherrie Levine
Michael Mandel and Larry Sultan
Barbara Kruger
Victor Burgin
Gender Issues
Judith Golden
Cindy Sherman
Eileen Cowin
Laurie Simmons
Fabrication
James Casebere
Sandy Skoglund
Olivia Parker
Joel-Peter Witkin
Patrick Nagatani and Andree Tracey
Altering Time and Space
Jan Dibbets
Eve Sonneman
Lew Thomas
Hollis Frampton and Marion Faller
Mike Mandell
Barbara Kasten
David Hockney
Michael Spano
Holly Roberts
Doug and Mike Starn
Investigating the Body
Andres Serrano
Robert Mapplethorpe
John Coplans
David Wojnarowicz
Nan Goldin
Sally Mann
Multiculturalism: Exploring Identity
Dinh Q. Le
Jeffrey Henson Scales
Stephen Marc
Guerrilla Girls
Jo Spence
Terry Dennett
Annette Messager
Jolene Rickard
Clarissa Sligh
Carrie Mae Weems
Lorna Simpson
Krzystof Wodiczko
The Digital Future
Nancy Burson
Tyrone Georgiou
Pedro Meyer
Philip Lorca diCorcia
Jeff Wall |
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